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Manhattan Transfers

By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/16 4:06pm

Manhattan Transfers

We're more than a little jealous of the views.

Turn On, Tune In, Drop $14 M. On an UES Penthouse

The Park Regis at 50 East 89th Street isn’t what normally comes to mind when one thinks of $14 million penthouses. Built in 1974, it lacks the classical prewar touches of its Park and Fifth Avenue neighbors, and the standard unit sizes range from studios to two-bedrooms—not quite the palatial spreads that one expects from an eight-digit Upper East Side tower.

But what it lacks in outward beauty, the co-op makes up for with its interior and its views. Perched on the 32nd and 33rd floors, the unit has jaw-dropping views of Central Park, with just enough city in the frame to give it a Manhattan flavor (“Located in historic Carnegie Hill, The Park Regis offers the atmosphere of a small town,” the building description claims—unconvincingly, if you ask us, the UES being one of America’s densest neighborhoods), but not so much that you can’t make out every feature in the park. The Central Park Reservoir is especially prominent. The grand prewar apartments on Fifth and Park may have stately exteriors, but they generally top out at around half the height of the Park Regis. Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/16 2:40pm

Manhattan Transfers

Good luck.

$100 M. CitySpire Listing: The Most Expensive For Sale By Owner in History?

Long Island real estate scion Steven Klar was obviously not having much luck offloading his massive, octagonal condo at CitySpire Center with Douglas Elliman. The much-maligned “trophy” vanished from the market in January, when Mr. Klar  dumped the brokerage—a win for Elliman?—and decided to lick his wounds for a few months and/or get fired up for another try.

At $100 million, more than any home in New York City has ever sold for, the price was widely mocked. Why, people asked, would Mr. Klar think he could best One57′s penthouses, which have reportedly entered into contract for more than $90 million, in a late ’80s building and a unit that he bought for only $4.5 million in the early ’90s (and hasn’t renovated since)? Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/15 2:20pm

Manhattan Transfers

6 Photos

80 Washington Place

Sousaphonic Village Townhouse Boasts Waterfall, $28.9 M. Pricetag

After watching their townhouse sit on the market for a year without a sale, the owners of 80 Washington Place have decided to take a cue from the previous owner, composer and conductor John Philip Sousa: they’re marching on. They’ve selected a pair of new brokers—Town’s Robert Dvorin and Clayton Orrigo—and cut the ask by a million dollars.

Built in 1839, the 22.5-foot-wide Greenwich Village townhouse has only been owned by only three families over its 175-year life. Its most famous owner, John Philip Sousa, invented the sousaphone and penned marching ballads, including Marine standard “Semper Fidelis” and “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” and was also a committed technophobe. “These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this country,” he testified to Congress in 1906, presaging the rise of Skrillex. Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/13 3:12pm

Manhattan Transfers

1049 "Fifth" Avenue.

Occupy Fifth Avenue: John Zuccotti Buys On (Well, Near) a Different Park

John E. Zuccotti may have a park of his own downtown, made famous by the Occupy Wall Street protests that centered around the privately-owned public space, but when he and his wife Susan decided to pick up an apartment in Manhattan, they chose a more classical park to look out onto: Central Park.

The real estate titan (you don’t get a park in Lower Manhattan named after you for nothing—he’s the chairman of Brookfield Properties American division and was a partner at Olympia & York, the chairman of the Real Estate Board of New York and has served on the Planning Commission; for a brief period in the the ’70s, he was even an establishment favorite for mayor) picked up a two-bedroom on the sixth floor for nearly $2.6 million—a number that, on Fifth Avenue, suggests a striking degree of modesty. Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/09 5:20pm

Manhattan Transfers

A rolling stone gathers no moss, but can a $17.5 million townhouse gather a buyer?

Rock On: Jane Wenner Lists The UWS House That Rolling Stone Bought

When Jann and Jane Wenner split in 1995, the coupled stayed married,  putting off the legal wrangling that would inevitably arise when they split their publishing empire. Mr. Wenner borrowed $7,500 from his own family and from the family of his wife to found Rolling Stone, and once it grew into an empire worth hundreds of millions of dollars and includes Men’s Journal and Us Weekly, it would be understandable if the vagaries of divorce just didn’t seem worth it.

Until, that is, 2011. Mr. Wenner had been living with his partner, Matt Nye, a former Calvin Klein model 19 years his junior with whom he’s raising three kids, and Ms. Wenner finally wanted out. (There was speculation that the divorce was finalized because Mr. Wenner and Mr. Nye wanted to formally marry each other, but despite the legalization of gay marriage in New York, that never came to pass.) There was a little acrimony in the divorce, including a lawsuit filed by Ms. Wenner’s Amagansett groundskeeper, but things seem to have gone as smoothly as a divorce can be expected to go and Jane Wenner got to keep the couple’s Upper West Side townhouse, at 37 West 70th Street. Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/08 12:44pm

Manhattan Transfers

She's a survivor.

Central Park West Manse Tries for Another West Side Record

Robert A.M. Stern’s 15 Central Park West may be the hottest building in New York, but the good fortune hasn’t crept up the western edge of the park, which still plays second fiddle to the Fifth and Park when it comes to closing prices. There are some standouts, though, and the townhouse at 247 Central Park West is most definitely among them. Whether it stands out tall enough to get its $37 million ask is another question entirely.

Built in 1887, it’s the first townhouse you encounter on Central Park West—a rare holdout to withstand two waves of rapacious early 20th century redevelopment. The first, around the turn of the century and the construction of the city’s first subway on Broadway, saw developers raze townhouses and tenements all around No. 247 and its two neighbors on the block to erect apartment houses of a dozen or so floors. During the second boom, around the time the IND Eighth Avenue Line was being built underneath Central Park West and right before the Great Depression, the pressure mounted and builders strove for even loftier heights, with buildings as tall as the 30-story El Dorado eating away at what remained of the low-slung real estate. Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/06 4:41pm

Manhattan Transfers

Modest façade yields modest returns.

Hedge Fund Honcho John Thaler Makes 3.4% Annual Return on the Upper East Side

John Thaler is best known for his tech-heavy hedge fund picks, but this morning he cashed out on a more old world investment: real estate. The JAT Capital manager just sold his condo combo at 450 East 83rd Street for $5.2 million, according to city records.

Mr. Thaler bought the two 17th-floor apartments at the Cielo in 2006 and 2009, for a combined total of almost $4.4 million. After an average of five years of ownership, his profit—exclusive of any taxes, fees or renovation costs—comes out to about $800,000, or an average return on his initial investment of about 3.4 percent per year. Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/02 3:56pm

Manhattan Transfers

For $23 million, you'll no longer have to gaze longingly at the limestone loggia perched atop at 10 Gracie Square.

$23 M. to Live Next to Gloria Vanderbilt’s Old Penthouse

Not often do penthouses at Manhattan’s “Good Buildings” (as per Tom Wolfe, according to whom there are only 42) come on the market, but today is one of those rare days: the south penthouse at 10 Gracie Square was just listed for $23 million.

The white-glove building sits in the rarefied hinterlands of the far East Side, overlooking Carl Schurz Park, and once had a yacht mooring onto the East River, sadly disfigured by the FDR (which is decked over beneath the ritziest buildings—a coincidence, we’re sure). Moreover, the penthouse occupant gets an up-close view of the building’s rooftop fixture, which is rumored to be, along with that on top of 1040 Fifth Avenue, the inspiration for 15 Central Park West’s crown. Read More

By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/01 4:15pm

Manhattan Transfers

It's no Graceland, but 151 East 72nd Street will have to do for Mr. Sillerman.

From Movies to Music: HBO Honcho Sells UES Townhouse to Beatport Owner

After his $50 million golf venture on the Caribbean island of Anguilla went spectacularly awry, Robert F.X. Sillerman told the New York Post, “I think I have shown conclusively I’m not knowledgeable enough about the real estate business.”

Poor judgment in the West Indies aside, we’re betting that the music industry Renaissance man—Mr. Sillerman’s business interests range from the concert promoting titan that became Live Nation to Elvis’s old Graceland estate—will do a lot better with his latest purchase: a $12 million limestone townhouse on the Upper East Side.

The five-story, 18.5-foot-wide home was sold by HBO CEO Richard Plepler, who was not easily parted with the townhouse. After buying 151 East 72nd Street for almost $8.2 million in 2002, he got greedier than a Valyrian slave trader and tried to double his money by asking $18.5 million in 2008. While he may have had some takers a year earlier, Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy not a week later, prompting his broker, Jaar-Mel Sloane of Sloane Square, to pull the listing a short time after. Read More